Chapter 18
18
The thick cloud of cigar smoke wafting around Landry’s basement was almost too much for Franny to handle. The guys had been puffing away since before she’d shown up. The scent was thick and sweet, and even though she’d declined to participate, she could taste the cigars in the back of her throat every time she so much as breathed in.
The past two weeks, she and Jade had sat across from each other at the round poker table, not speaking, barely acknowledging each other’s presence. This time, though, Jade wasn’t there at all, and Franny found herself incredibly distracted by that fact.
At first, she thought the other woman might just be late. It was extremely unlike her, but shit happened. Then the minutes kept ticking by. And once Landry decided to start the game with nary a mention of her, Franny figured she genuinely wasn’t coming. That was when she started to feel uneasy.
It was weird being the only woman in the room. Especially during such a competitive game. The shit-talking seemed to be even more intense than usual, which wasn’t at all a problem in and of itself, just… weird. She thought back to weeks before, when Byrd had tried to let off some smart-ass sexist remark and Jade had immediately called him out on it. Franny had been right there to back her up, and together they’d shown him that they were absolutely not going to take any shit.
Franny was used to being the only woman in the group. Not in her personal life, God forbid. But professionally. Jade hadn’t been wrong when she’d argued that one of them being accepted on the field was something close to a miracle, but two of them… Honestly, Franny had never experienced it.
She used to be more familiar with the lonely nature of it, but recently, she’d gotten used to having someone else by her side. Even if she and Jade were supposed to be rivals, even if Jade was determined to dislike her, there was still a certain level of respect to be had. Whether it was on the field or at poker, having another woman around meant more to Franny than she’d realized. At least until that other woman wasn’t there.
She found herself quieter than usual during the game, but she noticed that Landry was quiet as well. That was her second clue that something was wrong. She kept one eye on the man the entire time, noticing the delay in his responses when someone addressed him and his lack of enthusiasm, even when it seemed like he had the upper hand.
Winning the game was the furthest thing from her mind, but she’d been cursed with a fantastic hand. Her first win had come as such a relief; she’d felt like she was doing what she’d been there to do—show that she deserved the space she wanted to take up. Now she’d realized that she was just as competent—if not more so—than everyone at the table. After a certain amount of time, she’d only been showing up to Thursday-night poker as an excuse to be in the same room as Jade.
The pot was a little smaller today with everyone pinching extra pennies for back-to-school activities, but she’d taken it all with little fanfare. Even with her lack of excitement, she’d reveled in the disap pointed, frustrated faces of the other men at the table. The only ones who seemed unaffected were Jeremy Bell and Landry. Bell probably because the dude didn’t have a mean-spirited bone in his body anyway. And Landry because he was obviously too distracted to give a shit.
After the game, a few of the guys headed out immediately, but Franny lagged behind, running through the motions of helping clean up as an excuse to get Landry alone to talk. It took almost an hour of near silence before she and the coach were the only two left in the basement.
She heaved a breath as she tied up the black trash bag that held their used red plastic cups and paper plates.
“Is, uh… is everything all right, Coach?” Her voice was rough from lack of use.
Landry’s brow quirked. “What do you mean?”
Franny shrugged. “You were awfully quiet tonight and, well, Dunn isn’t here, which is definitely out of character for her. So I was just wondering if there were any developments I should know about.”
Landry sighed, a ragged noise that she could tell came from the deep confines of his belly. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked at her for a few long beats. “Lim, what do you want from this?”
She was taken aback by the question. Honestly, she’d sooner expect him to tell her to fuck off than ask her something like that.
“Out of… playing poker, you mean?” she asked pathetically.
“Out of playing poker, out of working with the team, out of being here and asking me what you’re asking me.”
“I love football, sir.”
“We all love football, Lim,” he said. “Everybody out on that field every day loves football, probably more than they should, to be honest. But I can think of only two people who would show up on the field every day and work like you work without the promise of a title, without the respect it affords them, without the stipend they get with their paychecks. One of those people is me, and you know who the other one is.”
She found herself at a loss for words. Her lips opened slightly, then pressed together as she realized she didn’t know what to say. Every answer that popped into her head felt almost comically insufficient. She immediately thought that this was some sort of test or trick question. That maybe Landry was looking for her to say something specific. A response that would make him go to whatever gilded box he kept his whistle in and hand it over to her like a crown of precious jewels.
Franny looked at him—really looked at him—and saw the wrinkles in his weatherworn forehead and the way he seemed to sigh with every breath he took. He did not look like a man who was staring down the barrel of naming a successor. And if Franny were being honest, she knew that. His job had never been hers. Partly because it had always belonged to someone else, and partly because Franny had never actually been gunning for it in the first place.
“I want a place on this team,” she answered finally, keeping her eyes on his. “I want the community and the camaraderie. I want to guide the kids. I want to win. I want to get my bearings and my experience in the hopes that someday I might have what Dunn is about to have.”
With yet another sigh, Landry moved over to the corner of the room where the small bar was. Normally, libations for poker night were dad beers provided by “the house.” Every now and again, someone would bring a bottle of bourbon to sip out of red plastic cups. They’d never been offered anything from the actual bar. The man picked up a decanter of what she assumed to be scotch and poured a few fingers into a crystal-clear glass before he looked up and offered it to her.
She had to bite down the no that rose in her throat. Not because she was against sharing a drink with him but because scotch had always tasted to her like burnt gasoline. She recognized the symbolism of his offer, though. Like something out of a coming-of-age movie, Franny was being silently invited to partake in some kind of rite of passage. So she reached out and took it, immediately knocking a sip back. Pushing down an intense grimace, she forced a small grateful smile and said, “This is a good year.”
“I think I’ve had this bottle longer than you and Dunn have been alive.” He chuckled. “Which is why I’m trying my hardest to give you both a bit of grace, but goddamn do you make it hard.”
Franny’s eyebrows furrowed. “What have we done that needs grace-giving?”
Landry looked at her as if she’d just walked into a glass wall. “Oh, you don’t know?”
She shook her head.
“Maybe we can start with whatever the hell is clearly going on between y’all before we get to anything else.”
Her lips flapped open in surprise. “Coach… nothing is going on between me and Dunn. Like, truly, nothing. I mean, nothing like that anyway.”
“You believe that just as much as I do,” he said. “Which means not at all. I ain’t saying I understand what it is or why, but all that bickering back and forth isn’t fooling anybody.”
Honestly, Franny hadn’t considered that other people had gotten a whiff of their… dynamic. She sighed, crossing her arms over her chest. “Either way, I don’t really know what that has to do with”—she swished her hand around—“whatever else is going on.”
“Just an observation, I guess,” Landry said, stalling by deflection. “Look, here’s the truth of it. Season starts in a couple weeks. I’ve got my lead contender running around like a chicken with her head cut off, making us look bad, I’ve got a bunch of parents breathing down my damn neck, I’ve got all these kids depending on me, and I’ve got a wife who keeps sending me schooners she wants me to buy in Maine. The problem is, I don’t know who I can trust to hand all this over to, and I don’t know shit about sailing.”
“You can trust Jade, Coach.” The words were out before Franny could even consider keeping them in. “You know you can. Nobody else could ever possibly do it like her.”
Not even for a second did Franny regret letting that truth leave her lips. There was no denying it.
“I used to think that. I did.” Landry paused and shook his head. “But now I’m not sure she’s ready for it. She’s young yet… maybe it’s not her time.”
That gave Franny pause. Not ready for it?… Jade? She’d never known the woman to be anything other than a paragon of near perfection when it came to her job. She was almost… above it all in a way. Dunn never seemed to mess up; mistakes were not in the woman’s wheelhouse. What could she possibly have done to make Landry think that? And so suddenly too.
She almost went to ask, to dig deeper and get to the bottom of it. But Franny didn’t want to be outwardly nosy. She didn’t think Landry would tell her anyway. Based solely on the way his expression seemed to be closing off in real time, she knew he was done with the conversation as well.
“Well,” Franny said, deciding to get one last word in. “I can’t think of anyone else who could even get close to doing what you do other than her.” She patted the pockets of her joggers to make sure her things were still tucked away inside. “Maybe whatever extra cooking she needs isn’t going to happen until she’s actually thrown into the pot.”
She grimaced. It was a weird way to put it, but it made Landry’s face shift, so with the words hanging in the air, she made her quiet exit, bound for somewhere that was not her own home.
Smack in the middle of one of Greenbelt’s oldest neighborhoods was a small ice cream stand called Custard Castle. It was a seasonal place, only open during the warmer months, and drew crowds of people from all over the city every day. A few doors down and across the street from Custard Castle was a big, beautiful house made of tan bricks and covered with windows.
Years ago, when Franny had first arrived in Greenbelt, her ex-girlfriend had taken her to the small stand on her welcome tour. As they’d walked back down the street to where they’d parked Franny’s car, they had passed that brick house, and in the yard was a woman watering flowers. She’d had on a pair of tight denim booty shorts and a bikini top, all glistening brown legs and round tits, and Franny had nearly choked on her strawberry shortcake waffle cone at the sight of her.
Months later, after Franny had been left by said girlfriend, she’d recognized that woman as one of her coworkers and had barely been able to utter any type of polite Southern greeting upon their introduction. She’d felt awful about it, but all she could see was that image of Dunn in her head. The splash back of water droplets from the hose on her smooth skin, the way her round ass looked in those shorts.
Even now, as she pulled up to the curb outside the house, she got a flash of it. She’d left Landry’s with something sitting in her heart. A great need to get to the bottom of what was happening with Dunn. To warn her. To check on her. This was the only place she could think of to look for her. It was weird, maybe a little stalkerish, but the need was almost oppressive, and all she could do was follow it.
Luckily, Jade’s old-ass truck was right there in the driveway. Rusted near her tires and faded blue, it stood out on the perfectly paved plot next to the S-Class Mercedes that was pulled up alongside it.
She couldn’t imagine the woman living here, but what the hell did she know?
Gathering every ounce of bravery she had, she made her way up the drive and onto the porch before committing one of the greatest sins known to Southern moms everywhere—showing up at someone’s house unannounced after 7:00 P.M.
A woman answered the door with obvious confusion on her face. Franny knew instantly that this woman was related to Dunn. She was a little darker, taller too, but the eyes were the same, as were her lips and cheekbones. Franny couldn’t help but smile.
“Hi, ma’am. I’m sorry to bother you at this time of night,” she said, though it was barely past nine. “My name is Francesca Lim. I was wondering… is Jade Dunn here, by any chance?”
The woman leaned against the doorframe, looking Franny up and down. “Does she know you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Franny said with a nod.
“Are you her girlfriend? She didn’t tell me she had a girlfriend.”
Franny coughed. “N-no, ma’am, we’re just… We work together.”
“Hmmm…” The older woman’s lips pursed. “I sure never had a coworker show up at my parents’ house in the middle of the night looking for me.”
Franny had no rebuttal to that. What was it with all these people shocking her into silence today? She didn’t like it, not one damn bit.
“I am sorry about that.” Franny choked out the words. “It’s really important, or I swear I wouldn’t have…”
The woman had a skeptical look on her face but pushed her hip off the side of the doorframe and stepped inside the house. “Come on in, then.”
Franny breathed a sigh of pure relief, flashing her a thankful smile before following her inside. “So, are you Jade’s sister or…”
She knew that Jade was an only child, but she couldn’t help but try to butter the older woman up a bit. Franny had made an awful first impression, and she was willing to do anything to soften it.
“I’m Joyce, her mama.” The woman snorted.
“It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Joyce.”
They entered the kitchen before either of them could say anything else. Two large cherrywood pocket doors briefly blocked the view, but inside was one of the more gorgeous scenes Franny had ever seen. It was a large space with dark wood cabinets that matched the hardwood and green granite countertops. It smelled like sweet, warm apples and was outfitted with warm yellow lighting. Off to the right of the room was a full-size dining table, where Jade and the man Franny presumed to be her father sat.
Jade had her head down on the table, forehead touching the wood as her father looked over her with a mix of concern and exasperation.
“You’ve got company, Jadey,” her mother called.
“Someone come to kill me, I hope.” The words were muffled by the surface under her face.
“Hey now! Don’t you put that out there, girl,” her father and mother immediately snapped together.
“Definitely not here for that,” Franny said. She suddenly felt shy as she said the words, but the way Jade’s head lifted up instantly at her voice left all that shyness by the wayside.
Her heart contracted when she saw Jade’s face. Not just in the way it always did, that immediate rush of excitement and pleasure she captured like a snapshot. This time, her chest ached for the look of sadness on Jade’s face. The sheer vulnerability, the wet tear streaks on brown skin and dark, soaking eyelashes.
Franny wanted to run across the room and press Jade’s face into her chest, wrap her arms around those quivering shoulders until they stilled.
“What are you doing here?” Jade’s words calmed her. They weren’t cruel or full of disdain, but they were confused.
“I…” Franny swallowed, her throat suddenly thick and unable to let words escape.
Thankfully, Ms. Joyce took pity on her. “Franny here said she needed to talk to you about something important.”
Jade sniffed. “Like, involving the team?”
She nodded.
“You saw Landry tonight? At poker?”
Franny nodded again.
Jade’s face looked like it was about to crumple all over again. Then she seemed to stop herself, pushing some of the flyaways off her forehead before dragging her hands down her face. She stood up and strode out of the room, making sure to take Franny by the arm and drag her behind.
“Um, thank you for having me,” Franny called out to Jade’s parents just before she disappeared around the corner.
She was silent as Jade led her through a door and then down a flight of stairs into a basement that looked nicer and more outfitted than her own apartment. Pulling a set of sliding doors open, Jade took them across a path of big, flat stones set in mulch. In the huge backyard, nestled into a thatch of greenery, was a tree house. It was built around the wide trunk of a huge willow oak, a canopy of branches and leaves almost hiding the little wooden box from the rest of the world.
“Up,” Jade said simply, finally—regretfully—letting go of her forearm.
“Okay.” Franny’s tone was skeptical, but she gave a quick smile. “Just don’t look at my ass.”
It was cooler than normal for late July, though still hot, and while it wasn’t humid, the air felt like it was on fire.
Franny ascended the ladder carefully, opening the door to the little house to see a silvery string dangling above her. She pulled it, letting the small bulb filter light through the space. It was very rugged inside, nothing fancy, but there were a couple of beanbag chairs, a plush rug, and a bunch of books and magazines, even a little table. She would have killed for something like this as a kid.
“So this is what being an only child gets you, huh?” she said when she heard Jade close the door behind her.
“I built it with my granddaddy when I was a kid,” Jade said, crossing her arms over her chest. “I needed space for my little plots and schemes.”
Franny looked over at her and smiled, relief flooding her stomach when Jade smiled back at her—small as it was.
“Did you come here to tell me that Landry is going to let me go?”
“I came to see what’s going on,” Franny said. “I had a little talk with him tonight after the game, and he… he seemed really cut up about something. He wouldn’t tell me the details, but… he was saying some things that concerned me.”
“Some things about me?”
Franny nodded silently.
“And you came here to… what? Rub it in my face now that you’ve got the upper hand?” Jade’s eyes were on the ground, her jaw clenched tightly.
“I’m so sick of this shit, Dunn,” Franny ground out. “You’ve been in some kind of one-sided competition with me all summer.”
“Well, you’ve been playing along.”
“Yeah, because it was the only way to get you to pay any fucking attention to me, dude!”
“Don’t call me dude ,” Jade grumbled. “And that just… isn’t true.”
Franny shot her a look. “I’m not even convinced that I did anything to make you hate me, and I’ve spent literal days sitting around questioning myself on that. I don’t know what it is. All I know is that you’ve said more to me in the past two months than you have in two years.”
Jade’s dark eyebrows furrowed toward each other, making a deep wrinkle in the space between them. “Why do you care so much about whether I talk to you or not?”
Franny didn’t say anything as she stared the other woman down. Instead, she tried to convey everything with her expression. The exasperation, the frustration, the sheer fucking want.
Jade met her eyes for a few moments. It was the longest eye contact they’d ever maintained, even longer than when they’d fucked in the bathroom at the club. Franny’s insides twisted, her guts roiling like she’d eaten something spoiled. She felt afraid of the consequences of what she had just admitted, even if she couldn’t say it out loud yet. Largely because she felt no confidence that her feelings would be reciprocated.
With a heavy sigh, Jade practically threw herself down onto one of the beanbag chairs. “I have so many things inside me, Francesca.”
The sound of her full given name leaving the other woman’s lips made Franny shiver. Jade almost never used it. She could only recall her saying it in times like this, when they found themselves swept up in passion. In those moments, it felt like Jade forgot to keep up the walls that allowed her to at least pretend to hold Franny at arm’s length.
“I know everybody else does too,” Jade said. She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth for a moment before releasing it. “But my whole life, I’ve just felt this… pressure. It’s like there’s something sitting on my chest that won’t move. The only time I get relief is when something big happens and I feel like I’m not fucking everything up. And right now, I know that I have definitely fucked everything up.”
Franny’s heart sank. To her, Jade went through it all so effortlessly. From the way her ponytail swung when she walked across the field to how she wrangled her students in during fire drills. There wasn’t a single part of her that seemed anything less than perfectly put together. Always. She should have known, though. Those kinds of people always seemed to have something simmering under the surface. A jitteriness, an anxiety that came inherently with desperately having something to prove, even if only to themselves.
“I don’t think you’ve fucked everything up,” Franny said, moving to sit in the big red beanbag next to Jade. Her lower back and knees immediately protested. “Landry was, well, definitely not happy about whatever it is you did, but I tried to talk him down.”
Jade’s head whipped over to her so fast, Franny was almost afraid the motion had broken her neck. “You tried to talk him down… for me?”
Franny sighed from deep in her diaphragm, not even bothering to stop her eyes from rolling. “The only thing I did was remind him of what all of us, including him, already know. Which is that there’s nobody better for this job than you.”
“What did he say to that?”
“He didn’t say much, but he knows it’s true,” Franny consoled her. “What did you do anyway?”
With a groan, Jade threw herself even farther back into the furniture. “I snuck into one of West Beaufort’s scrimmages and just… took a few notes.”
“Jade!” Franny’s mouth dropped open.
“I know, I know. I-I wasn’t thinking straight. All I could focus on was getting the upper hand against—” She took a skittish peek over at Franny. “Against you, and I seriously crossed the line. I didn’t take any game tape, I swear. I just… I don’t know. I knew I was toeing a line, I just figured that because I didn’t technically cross it, I could skate by. The worst part is that I didn’t even see that I’d done something wrong until Landry found out and reamed me out for it.”
“That is not at all what I expected.” Franny laughed. “I thought you’d, like, called the man an asshole to his face or got into an argument with a parent or something. Not that your ass was out there doing Espionage: Sports Edition.”
Jade gave another groan. “I literally put on a church-auntie wig and everything. It’s deeply embarrassing to think about in retrospect.”
Franny’s cackle bounced off the wood walls of the tree house.
Jade bumped her shoulder with her own, making Franny snort as she came close to losing her balance.
“I can’t fucking believe I’m about to lose my dream because I decided to play Harriet the Spy for a day.”
“He’s going to give you the position, Jade. You know he is.”
Jade shook her head, suddenly sober. “I don’t know that, and neither do you. Shit, he probably doesn’t either.”
They were looking at each other, gazes locked, faces somber. The air between them smelled like damp wood and fresh earth.
“What will you do if he doesn’t give you the job?”
Jade swallowed. “I don’t know that either.”